Dental Health: Birmingham

(asked on 13th December 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an estimate of the proportion of low-income families that attend yearly dental check-ups in Birmingham.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 19th December 2023

National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on recall intervals indicates that a healthy adult with good oral health need only see a dentist once every two years, and a child once every year. Data is therefore collected accordingly.

Under our reforms of July 2022 practices have been reminded that urgent dental care should be provided as part of their core service offer to patients, and that adherence to risk based recall intervals and other NICE guidance is a contractual requirement.

NHS Dental Statistics for England, 2022-23 Annual Report, brings together information on National Health Service dental activity in England for the 12-month period to 31 March 2023 and information on the number of patients seen by an NHS dentist up to 30 June 2023. This is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-dental-statistics/2022-23-annual-report

The data shows that 58.5% of courses of treatments were delivered to patients exempt from paying patient charges in 2022/23 for Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board.

Reticulating Splines